Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Today was a rough day for my dad. In order to make his breathing more comfortable, the doctors decided to do a tracheotomy on him. A tube in his trachea now helps him breathe, allowing the tube in his mouth to be removed. In order to reduce the risk of infection, he had a PICC line removed from his arm and a central line was put into his neck. For the first time in a week he had a temperature. His blood pressure was consistently high and he had blood in his stool. They will be performing a colonoscopy on Tuesday to assess the source of his bleeding, and have been giving him blood to keep up with the loss. Dad remains on dialysis, but the kidney team hopes to see further improvement in the future. His chest x-ray looked better today as well, though his numbers change daily as needed. On the positive side, he is no longer sedated and is able to respond through shaking his head and squeezing our hands. It is a relief that he can finally communicate his needs to both us and the hospital staff.